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 Haverel
When you’re playing Scrabble or Words with Friends, do you ever try random letters and hope they stick? One listener managed to play the word haverel that way. It’s an old term from Scotland and Northern England meaning “someone who talks foolishly or senselessly.”

 Grammar School
Why are elementary schools sometimes called grammar schools? The earliest schools, called scolae grammaticales, were connected to monasteries. They were meant for teaching Latin grammar. The term declined in popularity during the 1960s.

 Plural of Cyclops
What’s the plural of cyclops? If you have a group of those one-eyed mythical monsters, your best bet is cyclopes, pronounced sye-KLOH-peez.

 Imeldific
If something’s gaudy and excessive, Filipinos might call it imeldific. It’s a slang term inspired by Imelda Marcos and her legendary shoe collection.

 Borrow vs. Lend vs. Loan
What’s the difference between borrow and lend, or between borrow and loan? The real difference between these verbs is which direction the thing is traveling. Something similar happens with teach vs. learn and bring vs. take.

 Fill-in-the-Blank Word Puzzle
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called “I Don’t Think So, M-W.” The name is a nod to Merriam-Webster’s word of the day email, which often uses puzzling example sentences, like this one: “Lying in my tent that night, I could hear the campfire crackling and the crickets __________ and none of the city sounds I was accustomed to.” Good luck filling in that blank.

 Does Please Make a Request Optional?
If a command begins or ends with the word please, does that make the order optional? The hosts agree that generally it’s polite to honor such a request, despite the phrasing.

 Changing Meanings of Gay
How did the word gay come to mean both “lighthearted” and “homosexual”? In the late 1800s, the term gaycat was used in hobo culture to refer to an inexperienced hobo who might take on an older mentor for help, often another male. Over time, there was a convergence between gay as slang for “homosexual” and “gay” from the French term for “happy.”

 Paronomasia
Paronomasia’s just another word for pun, and Martha can’t resist offering an example.

 Road Warrior
What is a road warrior? Besides being a term for someone who travels a lot or commutes a long distance, it’s also used by some to refer to military personnel who are retired on active duty, also known as R.O.A.D.

 Riddle from 1835
Grant pops a riddle from an 1835 collection titled The Choice Collection of Riddles, Charades, and Conundrums by Peter Puzzlewell.

 How British and American First Meetings Differ
Step into a traditional English pub, it’ll be a while before everyone knows your name. A long while, in fact. The rules of conversational engagement are different in the UK from what you’d find in a place like Cheers. Kate Fox’s Passport to the Pub: The Tourist’s Guide to Pub Etiquette spells out many of the customs. For example, at English pubs, it’s better not to go for a handshake. Lynne Murphy, an American linguist living in the UK, addresses these differences in her blog Separated By a Common Language.

 Gone Pecan, A Southern Saying
If someone’s gone pecan, they’re doomed, defeated, and down on their luck. This idiom, common in New Orleans, probably caught on because of its rhyme.

 High Lonesome
Here’s a slang word for being drunk you might not have heard of: high lonesome.

 Metonymy
When someone talks about Hollywood or Wall Street, they’re probably not talking about a California city or a Manhattan street. It’s an example of what rhetoricians call metonymy. Metonyms like the White House or Downing Street are often used as substitutes for a group of people or an industry.

 More Cabbie Slang
What is a bingo? If you’re a taxi driver, a bingo is someone you don’t pick up because your cab is already occupied. Another bit of cabbie slang is bunco. That’s when they are called to a specific address but no passenger shows up.

 Dried Plum
The term dried plum has come into vogue since prune seems to have some negative connotations.

 Town Names Ending in -ham
Why do some town names end in ham? Effingham, Illinois; Birmingham, Alabama; Gotham City, U.S.A. They all derive from the Old English ham meaning “home” or “homestead.”

Photo by David Pettersson. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

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 Schoolyard Rhymes
What’s your favorite schoolyard rhyme? Maybe it’s the singsong taunt that goes, “Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.” Or the romantic standby about two lovebirds sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Some playground chants are rude, others are crude, and many involve figuring out that whole business about the birds and the bees.

 What Should Grown Children Be Called?
If you’re an empty nester, you’ve probably wondered about a term for one’s grown offspring. Do you use the term adult children? How about kid-ults? Since the 1960′s, the term has also been used in the marketing and advertising world. There, kid-ults often refers to, for example, the kind of grownup who enjoys reading Harry Potter. This term combining the words kid and adult is an example of a portmanteau word, or what linguists call a blend.

 Ogle
How do you pronounce ogle? Is it oh-gle? Oogle? By far the best pronunciation is the first but older slang dictionaries do include the verb oogle. All of these words connote the idea of looking on with desire, often with an up-and-down glance.

 Backward Journey Lithe
It’s time for a round of Name that Tune! What familiar song, translated into Shakespearean English, begins “Oh, proud left foot that ventures quick within, then soon upon a backward journey lithe”? There’s much more to these overwrought lyrics, which come from Jeff Brechlin’s winning entry in a 2003 contest sponsored by The Washington Post. The newspaper asked readers to submit familiar instructions in the style of a famous writer.

 Academy Awards Word Puzzle
Just in time for the new movie season, Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game involving one-word movie titles that have won Best Picture Academy Awards. For example, which Oscar-winning film is titled with a man’s middle name that means “for the love of God”?

 Can Facts Be False?
Does a statement have to be true to be a fact? When it comes to the difference between facts and opinions, some may argue that facts are merely claims that can be proven true or false. Most dictionaries, however, assert that in order for an assertion to be a fact, it must be true.

 Dog Chewing Waspers
What does it mean to look like a dog chewing waspers? Or like a possum eating persimmons? And what does it mean when someone says, “He was grinning like a mule eating briars”? These idioms, which have been recorded in Kentucky and Virginia, refer to people chewing with their mouths open in a less-than-civilized fashion. In all of these examples, the one who’s masticating is showing lots of teeth — rather like a beagle trying to eat a sliding glass door.

 Fancified Traditional Song
Time for more Name that Tune: What song, often sung in rounds, inspired this high-falutin’ first line? “Propel, propel, propel your craft, progressively down the liquid solution.”

 Prefix in-
Why does the prefix in- sometimes make a synonym rather than an antonym? In the case of invaluable, the prefix is still a negation, since it suggests that something’s value is incalculable. Michael Quinion‘s website affixes.org shows how in- prefixes have changed over time.

 Hokey Pokey
Yikes! Come to think of it, what if the hokey pokey IS what it’s all about?

 More on Learning Cursive
Do children still need to learn cursive? Following in our first discussion of whether cursive should be taught, many listeners now in their twenties say they didn’t learn cursive in school and have trouble reading it. Others view it as a lost art, akin to calligraphy, which should be learned and practiced for its aesthetic value.

 Dog and Pony Show Origins
What is a dog-and-pony show? This disparaging term goes back to the 1920s, when actual dog and pony shows competed with far more elaborate circuses. Many times the dog-and-pony offerings served as a front to hoochie-coochie shows or tents serving illegal alcohol. Over time, in the worlds of politics, business, and the military, the term was transferred to perfunctory or picayune presentations.

 No Ideal
Is it correct to say “I have no ideal” instead of “no idea”? In Kentucky, this use of ideal is common across education and socioeconomic lines. Flustrated, a variant of frustrated that connotes more anger and confusion, is also common in the Bluegrass State. Grant explains the liquidity of the letters L and R, the sounds of which are often confused in English.

 Mary Had a Little Problem
“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was black as ink, it chewed the paper off the walls and spit it in the sink.” There’s a variation you probably missed on the playground!

 Agreeance vs. Agreement
What’s the difference between agreeance and agreement? While agreeance is a word, it hasn’t often been used since the 19th century, whereas agreement is both correct and common. Best to go with agreement.

Photo by Nerissa’s Ring. Used under a Creative Commons license.

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 How Products Got Their Names
Nancy Friedman’s blog Fritinancy is a great source of information about how products get their names. For example, the names Twitch and Jitter were rejected before the creators of Twitter finally settled on the well-known moniker.

 Wild Hair
The idiom to have a wild hair, which dates to the 50′s, means you’re itching to do something. It’s pretty literal: just think about those itchy stray hairs under your collar after a haircut.

 Trillin on Whom
Is it fussy and pretentious to use the word whom instead of who? If you think so, you’ll be heartened by writer Calvin Trillin’s observation on the difference between whom and who: “As far as I’m concerned, whom is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.”

 Use vs. Utilize
Which is correct: use or utilize? The answer depends on the context. The word utilize carries an additional shade of meaning, suggesting that you’re using something in a way it’s not ordinarily employed. For example, you would use a stapler to staple, but you might utilize a stapler as a paperweight. In any case, use is your safest bet.

 M&M Name
One of comedian Megan Amram’s hilarious tweets made Martha wonder about how M&M’s got their name. In 1940, Forrest Mars and an heir to the Hershey fortune, Bruce Murrie, created a candy similar to the European chocolates called Smarties. The American version takes its name from the initials of the candymakers’ last names, Mars and Murrie.

 Colbertism Word Game
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a word game full of Colbertisms, in honor of how comedian Stephen Colbert pronounces his own name, with a silent “T” at the end. Why not drop the “T” off all words ending in “RT”?

 30 at the Ends of Articles
Why do newspaper reporters end articles with the number 30 or the three-pound-sign symbol ###? No one knows for sure, although that never stopped journalists from debating the origin of this way of ending a story. The practice arose in a bygone era when reporters typed their copy directly onto paper and handed it over to copyboys, and needed a way to indicate the last page in case one was lost somewhere in the process. In 2007, a vestige of this old practice figured in an amusing correction in the New York Times.

 Writing Customer Apologies
What is the best way to write an apology to a customer, especially if you’re handling complaints for a corporation. Some tips: be sincere, and make sure your wording makes clear that you understand the consumer’s complaint and that your company takes responsibility for the mistake and wants to make things right.

 Naming Aspirin
Aspirin is now a generic drug, but it was once a brand-name product made by Bayer. It’s just one of many genericized trademarks, also known as proprietary eponyms, which includes not only aspirin, but kerosene, dry ice, and cellophane.

 Juju
What is juju? Is there such a thing as good juju, or is it only possible to have bad juju? This African term for a charm or spell took off during the Back-to-Africa movement in the 1960′s, and has been mentioned in connection with international soccer matches.

 Naming Heroin
Is it true that the drug heroin was once marketed to families? Yes! In the 1890′s, heroin, a substitute for morphine, was hailed as a tremendous help to patients with tuberculosis, a leading cause of death at the time. Heroin eased the terrible suffering of tuberculosis by suppressing the respiratory system and thus the painful coughing fits associated with the disease. Nineteenth-century German doctors used the term heroisch (“heroic”) to describe powerful drugs, and the German company that would later make Bayer aspirin dubbed this promising new drug Heroin. Before the drug’s addictive nature and damaging effects were known, heroin was marketed specifically for children, resulting in some rather astonishing Spanish-language ads.

 Two-Top
If a waiter needs a table for two, they might call for a two-top. This restaurant lingo, referring to the amount of place-settings needed, comes from a larger body of terms. Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential is a good source of additional slang from kitchens around the world.

 Cut to the Quick
If you cut something to the quick, it means you’re getting at its very essence. It comes from the Old English word cwicu, meaning alive. It the source of the quick in the phrase the quick and the dead, as well as the words quicksilver (“living silver”), and quicksand (“living sand”), and the quick of your finger, the tender part under the fingernail.

 Naming Hallmark
Hallmark Cards got its name from Joyce C. Hall, who bought an engraving shop along with his brothers in 1910. Would it have taken off had they just called it Hall Cards?

 Doctor’s Appointment
Why do we say that we have a doctor’s appointment instead of an appointment with a doctor? After all, we don’t say we have accountant’s appointments or attorney’s appointments.

Book Mentioned in the Broadcast

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This episode first aired June 23, 2012.

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 Cabbie Slang
A former cabbie shares his favorite jargon, like green pea and making your nut. Someone waving down an occupied cab is known as a bingo, and the cabbie will usually tell the dispatcher to send another car. A San Diego cabdriver has gathered much more taxi slang.

 Cheesy
Is there any etymological connection between the dairy product and the adjective cheesy, meaning inferior, cheap, or otherwise sub-par? This descriptive term for something lowbrow or poorly made at one point had positive connotations in the 1800s, when something great could be said to be cheesy as a rare Stilton. Over time, though, cheesy took on the connotation of something unappealing, an apparent reference to a low quality, stinky cheese.

 Shoestring Budget
A shoestring budget is a spending plan that’s as thin and spindly as a shoestring. Not surprisingly, the term gained popularity during the Great Depression.

 I Would Liefer
A line from The Moor of Venice, “that I would liefer bide,” features an old word for rather that shares a root with the words love and leave, as in by your leave.

 Stretch the Hood
Cabbies are sometimes known to stretch their hood, which means to fib to the dispatcher about their location. Sometimes they have to drive out of bounds to pick up a fare.

 Container Clue Word Game
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word puzzle based on so-called container clues, where the answer is divided into two words, one which is found inside the other. For this game, the answers are all Greek gods.

 Best People in the World
A Word-Book of Virginia Folk Speak from 1912 includes this gem: “Bachelors’ wives and old maid’s children are the best people in the world.”

 Identifying Hipsters
What is a hipster? Is it an insult to call someone a hipster, even if they’re, well, a hipster? Do hipsters identify themselves as hipsters? Grant traces the label from 1960s counterculture to today’s skinny-jeaned Brooklyn paradox.

 Omnishambles
The handy term omnishambles means all in shambles, and has found its way from the British TV comedy The Thick of It to the floor of the House of Commons.

 Cucoloris
What is a cucoloris? This lighting grate, which also goes by such names as cookie, gobo, and dapple sheet, is used in photography to cast a dramatic shadow. There are lots of spellings of this word, including cuculoris, kookaloris, cookaloris, and cucalorus. The name may have to do with George Cukor, an early pioneer of the tool in old Hollywood.

 A Paraprosdokian
Add this to your list of paraprosdokians: Two guys walked into a bar. The third one ducked.

 Bootleg History
Where does the term bootleg come from? Originally, smugglers tucked bottles of alcohol into their pants to sneak them onto Indian reservations to sell illegally. The term knockoff also refers to pants, and buttleg is a variant that can refer to contraband cigarettes.

 Give Me A Sawbuck
Why do we call a ten-dollar bill a sawbuck? The support for woodworking known as a sawbuck folds out into the shape of an X, the same shape as the Roman numeral for ten. Hence, the slang term for the currency worth ten bucks.

 Typos: Performance vs. Competence
Can you get away with calling a misspelled word a typo if you didn’t know how to spell it in the first place? One variety of mistake is called a performance error, where the goof is somehow related to the machine or keyboard. A competence error occurs when someone doesn’t know the difference between your and you’re in the first place.

 Pull a Brodie
To spin a brodie or pull a brodie is to spin a doughnut in a car. The term derives from the name of Steve Brodie, who allegedly jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. To do a brodie, originally meaning to jump or fall, came to mean any kind of stunt.

 A Poem From Us
On the website A Poem From Us, people upload videos of themselves reading poetry from other writers. Here, David Jones reads “A Cradle Song” by William Butler Yeats.

Photo by Shaun Sullivan. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Book Mentioned in the Broadcast

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This episode first aired June 16, 2012.

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 Newspaper Mistakes
Even the best newspaper reporters make mistakes. Here’s an unfortunately funny correction about the My Little Pony character a young woman thinks about to cheer herself up. Another correction from the Centralia Morning Sentinel notes that a member of a Christian rock band was on, um, drums, not drugs.

 Sidewalk Dodge
What do you call that moment when you try to walk past someone on the sidewalk, but you both move in the same direction? Perhaps slidewalking, doing the sidewalk boogie, or stranger dancing? Martha votes for polkadodge.

 Hundred-Mile Tape
In the military, a certain kind of duct tape is known as hundred-mile-per-hour tape because it can withstand 100-mph speeds.

 Ruthful
Someone can be ruthless, but can that person be ruthful? Ruthful is indeed a word that derives from an old definition of ruth meaning “the quality of being compassionate.” But unpaired negatives, like ruthless, unkempt, uncouth, or disgruntled, are common words that lack positive correlatives in common speech.

 Newspaper Miscorrection
A middle-school librarian caught the Arkansas Democrat Gazette messing up the title of the second book in the Hunger Games series. The newspaper then issued an abject apology.

 Crossword Pun Clues
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has lifted some tricky puns from New York Times crossword puzzles for this word game. What’s “a green org,” in three letters? How about a three-letter answer for “peas keeper”?

 Sesquipedalian Songs
It seems there’s a sesquipedalian version to the classic “Three Blind Mice” folk rhyme about a trio of rodents with impaired vision. Need a visual yourself? Try this one.

 Should Schools Teach Cursive Writing?
Should educators continue to teach cursive writing in school? For the sake of learning to read old documents and honing their hand-eye skills, many say “yes.” Most current teaching standards, however, require only keyboard training, not longhand.

 Let the Rain Settle It
Owe somebody money? How about you charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it? This is a useful idiom for friendly transactions where no payment is necessary.

 A Stepper Like You
“It ain’t no hill for a stepper like you,” is a popular idiom in the South meaning someone can finish the task at hand.

 Battle Buddies
In the Army, a battle buddy is someone assigned to be your constant companion, and it’s often shortened to just “battle.” Other words, like Upstate and cell, as in a mobile phone, have dropped the nouns they modified.

 Humongous vs. Gargantuan
Which word is larger, humongous or gargantuan? Which refers to something larger? Grant and Martha agree with usage expert Bryan Garner that the word gargantuan is the larger of the two.

 A Dull Wife
A correction in London’s Daily Mail notes that a Mr. Smith testified in court that he had “a dull life,” not “a dull wife.” Oops.

 Wash-Belly
In Jamaica, the youngest child is commonly known as the wash-belly. In addition to being the youngest, the term can also connote that the wash-belly is lazy and spoiled. Frederic Cassidy traces this and other terms in his Dictionary of Jamaican English and Jamaica Talk.

 A Correction Correcting A Correction
Craig Silverman’s book Regret the Error contains a maze of a correction that simply corrects an incorrect correction. You can also follow more recent collections of corrections on his blog at the Poynter Institute.

Photo by RBerteig. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

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This episode first aired March 16, 2013.

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 Adult Spelling Bee
Grant and Martha recently served as expert spellers at the San Diego Council on Literacy’s annual adult spelling bee, but don’t let the age group or philanthropic mission fool you-spelling bees are always i-n-t-e-n-s-e. The word Rorschach shall forever haunt them, but they also took away a new favorite — homologate, meaning to sanction or officially approve. As in, “I’m Joe Candidate, and I homologate this message.”

 Flabby Underarms
There comes a time in life where waving hello means showing off some flabby underarm, but we have some slang to make “flabby underarm” sound a little less icky. A hi Betty takes its name from the idea of someone waving hi to a friend named Betty. They’re also known as hi Helens, bingo wings, bat wings, and flying squirrels.

 Even More Tourist Nicknames
A while back we asked listeners what they call tourists in their neck of the woods, and we’ve heard back about tourons, which combines tourist and morons, and in the Florida panhandle, folks from out of town are known as sand dollars for bringing along their pocketbooks.

 “Redneck” Origins
Where does the term redneck come from, and is it derogatory? It goes back at least to the 1830s where it pops up in the Carolinas to refer to a farmer that works in the sun. Over time, people like listener Richard Ramirez of Fort Worth, Texas, have taken it as a term of pride, denoting their authenticity and work ethic. The reality series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo has furthered the cause with her call to redneckognize! As always, whether such a term is offensive depends on who’s saying it, and to whom.

 Old English Proverbs
Grant dug up an old book of English proverbs, with gems like “Novelty always appears handsome,” and “New dishes beget new appetites.” Perhaps you can consider those before lining up for that new iPhone.

 Fandom Quiz
Our Puzzle Master John Chaneski has a quiz for all the fans out there — as in fans of Star Trek, or The X-Files, or trains. Come to think of it, what would you call a fan of A Way with Words?

 Eephus, Ephus
Baseball fans know the eeuphus pitch-that arcing lob made famous by Rip Sewell in the 1946 All-Star Game. Before that, the word eephus referred to insider information. Jim Strain in La Mesa, California, even uses it as a verb, as in, “That dog’s not allowed on the couch, but he’ll eephus his way on somehow.”

 Frunk
Do you have junk in your frunk? As in, the front trunk, found on cars like a zippy Tesla.

 Rule of Thumb Origin
Where does rule of thumb come from? The idiom referring to a practical measure based on experience was never actually a law, though it does pop up in legal opinions suggesting that it’d be okay to let a man beat his wife if the stick was less than a thumb in width.

 Sacapuntas and Mock Obscenity
If you need to release some tension but don’t want to curse, try shouting “sacapuntas!” This Spanish word for “pencil sharpener” falls into a colorful line of curses that aren’t actually curses. For plenty of others, turn to Michelle Witte’s book The Craptastic Guide to Pseudo-Swearing.

 Daisy-Cutting
The term daisy-cutting, which refers to the low-action trot of Arabian and Thoroughbred horses, is reminiscent of the low grounder in baseball known as a daisy cutter and even the daisy cutter explosive, which shoots low-flying shrapnel.

 Top Pet Names
According to vetstreet.com, the top ten female puppy names from 2012 include Bella, Daisy, Lucy, Molly, and Lola. Notice anything odd? They’re all human names! Gone are the days of pets named Fluffy and Pooch. In are the days of human children named after fruits and vegetables. In the Middle Ages, though, you might run into dogs that answer to Amiable, Trinket, Nosewise, Holdfast, and Clench. For more about pet ownership back then, check out historian Kathleen Walker Meikle’s book Medieval Pets.

 Spizzerinctum
Do you have spizerinctum (or spizzerinctum) and huckledebuck? These terms for passion and energy, respectively, are fun examples of false Latin, meaning they replicate the look and mouthfeel of Latin words but aren’t actually Latin. Huckledebuck, which can also mean commotion or craziness, has been in use for over one hundred years but still hasn’t been given an entry in any mainstream dictionaries.

 “Whistling Dixi” Origin
You ain’t just whistling Dixie, and that’s the truth! Whistling Dixie, which refers to a studied carelessness, comes from the song that originated in minstrel shows and from which the South takes its nickname. But if you say someone ain’t just whistling Dixie, it means they’re not kidding around.

 Knock a Tater in the Head
Come on over for dinner, we’ll knock a tater in the head or something! This lovely form of a dinner invite came to us from Vera, a listener in British Columbia who heard it while living in Arkansas.

 Elbow Grease
Elbow grease isn’t a product you can buy at the hardware store. If a task demands elbow grease, that just means whatever you’re doing requires hard work that might result in sweat.

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by Josh Samson. Used under a Creative Commons license.

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